“Thank goodness people are starting to leave the left.”

As usual, Glenn’s sharp eye has picked up on what a lot of people here have noticed too.

My friend the president

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009 10:09 PST

Over the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has linked to and published protests from various individuals who are quite angry that people “on the left” are being so mean to President Obama, and several of them are so upset that they have decided they are “leaving the left,” whatever that might mean.  What’s most striking about these valiant defenses of Obama is how utterly devoid they are of any substantive points and how, instead, suffuse with weird, even inappropriate, emotional attachments they are.  These objections are grounded almost exclusively in (a) a deep-seated conviction that President Obama is a good and just man who means well; (b) their own rather intense upset at seeing him criticized; and (c) a spitting ad hominem fury of the type long directed by Bush followers at any critics of their leader, and generally typical of authoritarian attacks on out-groups critics.

…

After watching slack-jawed for a few minutes, I quickly realized that there was nothing unusual at all about their reaction to Palin.  This was exactly what led so many Bush followers to defend him no matter what he did — as he tortured and invaded without cause and chronically broke the law.  He was, like most of them, a “good Christian” who had a nice family and meant well, and thus, while he might err, he was not capable of any truly bad or evil acts.  Anyone who criticized him too harshly or too viciously was, by definition, revealing something flawed about themselves.  None of the specific arguments mattered.  None of it had to do with reason.  Like Palin’s admirers, Bush’s were convinced of the core goodness of his character, and they thus loved him and hated those who suggested that there was something deeply wrong in what he was doing.

The similarity between that mentality and the one driving the Obama defenses posted by Sullivan is too self-evident to require any elaboration.  Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom see Obama as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual.  These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies.  But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important.  They’re also far more potent.  Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one’s life who — like a loved one or close friend or religious leader — must be protected and defended at all costs.